Obedience (24 page)

He rolled the quietly rumbling brown Jaguar along a tree-shaded street of dignified, well-kept old apartment buildings, looking for an address Cecil had given him. The place Vaughn Thomas had been living. Before that stray bullet had struck him down in the fake fog at the farthest reach of the Combat Zone. If stray bullet it had been. Cecil doubted it.

“He was keyed up,” he told Dave. “Advertising is down at the end of the hall, but I pass there all the time. When his phone rang, he’d look at it like it was a rattlesnake. Sure, there were accounts out there, but there was something else out there too. And he didn’t want to hear from it, whatever it was. Jumpy? You never saw jumpy till you saw Vaughn Thomas. Not running scared—sitting scared.”

“You said he was a hater,” Dave said.

Cecil nodded. “Niggers, Jews, Hispanics, Asians, you name it. Never to anybody’s face. Too many of all those people around him all day long in the television business, the advertising business. But on the quiet, with that creep Kellaher in scheduling—you should hear the so-called jokes. ‘How many blacks does it take to roof a house? Depends on how thin you slice ’em.’ You know the kind.”

“To my sorrow,” Dave said. It was late at night. They sat on the long corduroy couch in the back building of the Horseshoe Canyon place. Shadows cast by a blaze in the big brick fireplace flickered in the rafters high above. They sat easy, legs stretched out. Dave sipped brandy, smoked, stared into the flames. “But haters make enemies.”

“Just what I said. Vaughn Thomas dying by accident—I don’t buy it. I don’t care what Lieutenant Leppard says.”

Dave sighed. “All right. I’ll go with you tomorrow.”

Now tomorrow was today. After wrapping up at the Combat Zone, Cecil had gone with his crew back to the studios in the hills near Dodger Stadium. Dave had come here to the quiet streets of West L.A. He found a parking place for the Jaguar and stepped along a sidewalk toward an archway into a patio with a mossy fountain, shrubs, ferns, an olive tree. He climbed red-tile steps to a white stucco balcony and rang a doorbell. Its sound suggested the apartment was empty. Maybe Jemmie—that was the only name Cecil could give him for the young woman Vaughn had been living with—maybe she was at the mortuary. He turned away, and went down the steps, where a short, stocky man was sweeping the patio. His hair was gray, his round face pink, pleasant, unlined as a baby’s. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt, ragged Bermuda shorts, sandals.

Dave showed him his license and said, “I’m looking for Jemmie.”

“She is gone.” He had a middle-European accent. “Yesterday, a well-dressed gentleman like you came by at noon, and not more than twenty minutes later, she departed. Suitcase in one hand, little Mike in the other. She had not even changed her clothes or combed her hair. In blue jeans, she left, and one of those bulky sweaters they like to wear. She had phoned for a taxi. It was out there waiting.”

“Gone for good?” Dave said.

He blinked up at the apartment door. “She did not say.” He gazed at Dave with brown eyes innocent as a child’s. It crossed Dave’s mind that eyes like that would be worth a lot to a liar. “She took her clothes, and little Mike’s, but not Vaughn’s. I went up to see. His clothes are still there. Maybe she will return for those.” He grunted to himself, wagged his head. “Maybe not. He is dead, poor boy. Dead man’s clothes, what use would she have for these?”

“She didn’t speak to you when she left?” Dave said.

“Speak to me? She never thought of me.” He lifted his arm to point with the broom handle and Dave glimpsed a blue tattoo, a concentration camp number. “That is my apartment over there. She could have stopped. I saw her—I see a lot from there. That window is like an extra television set.” He went back to sweeping.

“She didn’t tell you where she was going?”

“No, no. She did not even look my way.” The broom whispered, the dry leaves whispered back. “I only learned later what it was about. On the TV news.” He glanced briefly at Dave. “Young Vaughn got shot, killed. The well-dressed gentleman must have brought Jemmie the bad news.”

“You’d never seen him before?” Dave said.

“I do not see everything. I have to sleep and eat.”

“Did Jemmie look frightened?” Dave said.

The man made a neat pile of the leaves, then moved off to another quarter of the patio to clean up there. Dave followed. “She looked frightened most of the time.”

“You seem an easy man to talk to, friendly,” Dave said. “Did she ever tell you what she was frightened of?”

He leaned the broom against the rough gray rim of the fountain and held out his hand. “Kaminsky.” He peered up with those soft, gentle eyes. “And you’d be … ?”

“Brandstetter. What frightened her, Mr. Kaminsky?”

“A man named Dallas, that is what I heard her call him.” Kaminsky got the broom again and took up sweeping. “Big tall brute—long hair, looked like he came out of the—the wilderness, what you call the backwoods.”

Dave put the folder away. “He came here?”

“Not long after Vaughn and Jemmie moved in.”

“Had they come from the backwoods too?”

“I don’t know where they came from, but they were in luck. It is not easy to find nice apartments in L.A. But the people who were going to take it never returned, so I had it empty and waiting the day Vaughn and the girl and her little boy showed up. He claimed they were husband and wife and Mike was his son—but it was a lie. Anyone could see that. Jemmie and Vaughn both had dark hair, dark eyes, delicate bones. You can tell even now—by the size of his hands—that Mike will grow up to be like Dallas, big and rangy. And blond—of course, that he is already.”

“They weren’t married,” Dave said. “At least, on his job application at Channel Three he marked the ‘single’ box.”

“Ja, well,” Kaminsky said, “who cares about such details today?” He chuckled, marveling. “What importance we once attached to matters of no meaning.”

“We still do,” Dave said. “What did this Dallas want?”

“Jemmie. And Mike. Jemmie came to the door. For a moment, they just talked, then she began to shout at him. And he shouted right back at her. Both of them waving their arms. Very excited.”

“Particulars?” Dave said.

“I could not hear.” Now Kaminsky walked away. Out of sight, around a corner. In a minute he was back with a large green plastic bag and a square of cardboard. “One must be discreet.” He knelt, pushed the sweepings onto the cardboard with the broom, and when Dave held the bag open for him, dumped them inside. With a small grunt, he rose and they repeated the process with the other three piles. “People are entitled to their privacy.” He picked up the bulging bag, gathered the opening, and put a spin on it, then wired it shut with a quick twist of his fingers. “But what I saw I saw, and soon Vaughn came to the door. Dripping water. He had been in the shower, no? From down here, with that balcony in the way, he appeared naked. But when Dallas threw him down those stairs”—Kaminsky nodded—“I saw that he had wrapped a towel around his hips. I ran to my door and shouted I was calling the police. And nothing more was required. Dallas gave me one look, ran down the stairs, jumped straight over Vaughn, and was across this patio and gone.”

“Was Vaughn hurt?” Dave said.

“Only his dignity.” Kaminsky grinned. “But this was foolish, was it not? I mean, a man of six feet five inches versus one of five feet six? It was no disgrace. But he was disgusted with himself. ‘Shall I call the police?’ I said.”

“Well, that made him stop swearing. He said, ‘No thank you, Mr. Kaminsky. It was just a misunderstanding, among old friends.’”

“Was he afraid of the police?” Dave asked.

“The idea terrified him. That is what I think. I started to ask if Dallas was Jemmie’s husband, Mike’s real father.” Kaminsky picked up the trash bag and started off with it. “But I have managed apartments long enough to know better than to pry.”

“That’s your guess, is it?” Dave called after him.

“That is my guess.” Kaminsky once more disappeared around that corner. Dave waited. Then when he’d decided the interview was at an end, the man reappeared. “And it was not the last of this Dallas, either. He came back. Two or three times I saw him loitering in the neighborhood. Not an easy man to miss. The last time, Mike was out riding his plastic tricycle up and down the sidewalk, and I happened to glance out my front window, and here was Dallas, squatting down, talking to the child. I wasted no time. Immediately I went out there. And as soon as he saw me, he left. He had an old pickup truck with a camper on it. Got in this and rattled off. He did not return again. Not that I know of.”

“Did you tell Jemmie about it?”

“Of course, right away. She was in the laundry room. Turned white as the sheet she was folding, and ran out and fetched Mike and his wheels, and after that she never let him outdoors again, not unless she was with him.”

“Was her last name Dallas?” Dave asked.

Kaminsky shook his head. “She referred always to herself as Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Vaughn Thomas. She seemed proud of it.” Kaminsky glanced up at the closed door of the Thomas place. “A country girl, you know? Curious match. Vaughn wasn’t like this at all. College boy, rich boy. Spoiled. Sulky much of the time.” Kaminsky snorted. “He did not like me. He did not like my name. Always he sneered it, smirking. ‘Ka-
min
-sky.’ What do people like that think—that only people named Thomas have a right to be here?”

“People like that don’t think.” Dave looked toward the archway and the street beyond. “A country girl. But you never asked her where she came from? She never told you?”

Kaminsky scratched his forehead, thinking. “Horses,” he said at last. “She grew up around horses. That much she did say. And I believed her.” He gave a nod to himself and told Dave, “Girls crazy about horses are different, not just here in America, but all over the world. Did you ever notice that? A little bit—what shall I say—boyish?”

“Dallas will know where she came from. He came from the same place.” Dave turned away, turned back. “You didn’t happen to get his license number, did you?”

Kaminsky looked abashed. “I am sorry.”

“Don’t feel bad.” Dave moved off. “I’ll find him.”

“Wait.” Kaminsky hurried after him. “It had a bumper sticker. Shocking. A double lightning bolt, faded, peeling. Like the Waffen SS.” He stopped in front of Dave. “The TV news called Vaughn’s death an accident.” Plainly excited about being part of a murder investigation, he was also worried, anxious. “You think Dallas killed him?”

“I think it would be easy to walk into the Combat Zone carrying a real gun,” Dave said. “No one would notice.”

N
GAWI SMITH UNFOLDED FROM
his yellow cab in hinged lengths of white-clad leg that when he was fully upright had him towering over Dave. “No, sah,” he said happily, showing rows of terrific white teeth. He pushed an embroidered African cap back on his neatly barbered head. “I remember her because she was so frightened. She held on to the little boy in the back seat here”—he gestured with a long-fingered hand, as if Jemmie and Mike were still his passengers—“as if someone wanted to snatch him from her, and she kept looking out the rear window every few seconds, afraid we were being followed. ‘No one is following us,’ I told her. I would know, you see.” He bent his knees slightly, and for a moment used a shirttail to polish the mirror fastened to the door. “I always know when that is happening.”

“Does it happen often?” Dave said. The sun glared off the pale yellow stucco of the Greyhound bus station at the beach and made him squint.
Placa
had been spray-painted on the stucco, in black, in red, as high as human arms could reach—messages, boasts, threats, in symbols and codes only gang members could read. There had been less of this the last time Dave had passed here. There was so much of it now, it was all tangled up. He expected it would soon be painted over. Again. “Are you followed a lot?”

“When I am,” the tall black said, “I find a well-lighted place, a shopping mall parking lot maybe, and swing in there, and stop the cab, and get out, and open the door for the passenger, and order him out. I am not getting assassinated for the sake of a cab fare. There is a lot of shooting going on in the streets these days. And with these AK-47s and the other automatic rifles, everyone dies. Not just the target. They cannot really be controlled.”

“You get a nice class of passenger,” Dave said.

Smith raised and lowered his shoulders. “They look like anyone else. But their bags do not contain clothing. Drugs perhaps? Bundles of cash? Videotape masters? Who can say? They are almost always on their way to the airport. But if they wish to risk their lives in crime, that is no affair of mine. I dare not be killed or even wounded. I have a family in Nigeria, and it is my plan to save enough money to bring them here. My mother, my wife, my two children.”

“A hell of a place to bring anybody,” Dave said.

“Ah.” Smith grinned. “You do not know Nigeria. Now, Nigeria—that is a ‘hell of a place.’” He laughed.

Dave sighed, turned, looked across the street to the palisades, lawns, flower beds, old palm trees, railed paths, the ocean a gunmetal color with the sun glaring off it. Fancy kites bobbed and swooped above the beach, trailing ribbons. Gulls soared and cried. “Jemmie Thomas had one suitcase, is that right?”

“Rather a large one, and heavy.” Smith nodded. “As if it contained all her worldly goods. Brown simulated leather. Soft. And a handbag, one of those large, shapeless ones, worn over the shoulder on a long strap.”

“And you don’t know where she was headed?”

“I carried the grip for her into the station, and set it at the ticket counter,” Smith said. “She put a dollar in my hand and thanked me. A dozen persons were lined up to buy tickets. I could see out the window, someone had already got into my cab here at the curb. So I did not stay long enough to learn to what destination she bought a fare. Sorry.” He frowned, and bent above Dave, craning a long neck. His breath smelled of chewing gum, sweet, spicy. “Can you tell me? What was she so frightened of?”

“Somebody shot the man she was living with,” Dave said. “Not in her presence. He was away, playing weekend games. Action combat. You ever hear of it?”